“There’s nothing more subversive than being in your early twenties and making a movie,” says Williams of the notorious corner store scene. And as O-Dog and Kane are later aggressively questioned by the LAPD for their crime, the film questions why the legal system fails to offer up the same empathy and intensity when attempting to bring the killers of black youth to justice. This was angrily perceived as an injustice by the hip hop community, with 2Pac perfectly summarising this sentiment in the track ‘Hellrazor’: “Dear Lord if ya hear me, tell me why / Little girl like Latasha, had to die / She never got to see the bullet, just heard the shot / Her little body couldn’t take it, it shook and dropped / And when I saw it on the news I see busta’ girl killin’’Tasha / Now I’m screamin’ fuck the world…”īy reversing the two roles and instead depicting a black youth killing a Korean businessman, Menace II Society actively echoed the frustrations of the hip hop community. Despite the shooting being caught on tape and clearly showing Harlins doing nothing to motivate the attack, Ja Du was sentenced to just 400 hours of community service.
Just two years earlier, 15-year-old schoolgirl Latasha Harlins was shot in the head by Korean convenience store owner Soon Ja Du in South Central LA – a violent crime that occurred just 13 days after the Rodney King beating.
“Shame on your mother!” When O-Dog replies with the immortal line, “What did you say about my momma?” it’s obvious where things are headed, as the black youth shoots both shop keepers dead and then steals the CCTV recording. They are instantly met with hostility from the Korean proprietors, who harshly scorn them. This lack of restraint is apparent from the outset, with the opening scenes showing Kane and O-Dog visiting a local corner shop to buy some beer. Or, as Williams puts it, “We were so young, we hadn’t developed any restraints yet!” The Hughes brothers and Williams were in their early twenties when the film was released, and as such it contains an unflinching rawness which you suspect an older filmmaker would have shied away from exploring. It centres on best friends Kane (Tyrin Turner) and O-Dog (a career-best Larenz Tate), two teenagers searching for direction in a neighbourhood that only points one way – straight to the bottom. So many kids never make it out the hood, and I was more interested in telling their story.”ĭirected by Allen and Albert Hughes, Menace II Society is a graphic account of life in Watts, LA. “Boyz was all about the one kid who makes it out, but that was just a fairy tale. “We wanted to make the antithesis to Boyz n the Hood,” reflects screenwriter Tyger Williams, who wrote Menace II Society. Released just two years later, Menace II Society took audiences to a far darker place – if both films existed on a 12-inch single, it’s fair to say that Boyz n the Hood would be the radio edit to Menace II Society’s uncut version. When John Singleton’s Boyz n the Hood was released in 1991, it made an instant impact on audiences who were drawn to its emotive story of a kid making it out of South Central Los Angeles and into college. Yet to some the film was a sanitised version of life in the hood, which traded the gritty social commentary present in gangster rap for a far more palatable message of hope.
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